Casts have been used for well over a hundred years to protect set, broken bones. There are two basis types of casts: plaster of paris and more recently, fiberglass. Although more expensive, fiberglass has certain advantages over plaster, such as lighter in weight, generally longer wearing and often more durable.
Regardless of whether a cast is plaster or fiberglass, they typically have cotton padding in their interior facing the patient's skin surface in order to protect the skin and underlying bones from direct contact or pressure caused by the cast. It is important that neither the cast nor the cotton padding get wet. For example, the cast must be kept dry when bathing or showering. Although a fiberglass cast is impervious to water damage, if the cotton lining becomes wet it may cause skin irritation and possible skin breakdown. Also, moisture will cause the skin to become itchy, and the warm moisture may increase the susceptibility to infection. As a result of the above issues, flexible elastic sleeves have been developed which are used to enshroud either the fiberglass or plaster cast. These elastic sleeves are generally known and commonly sold.
One such prior art sleeve is represented by U.S. Pat. No. 4,639,945 to Betz issued Feb. 3, 1987. Betz provides an elongated flexible plastic sleeve that uses a gasket-like arrangement formed within a surrounding sealing ring. The problem, however, with such sealing ring gasket configurations is that the ring is usually made of semi-rigid waterproof material, which both increases manufacturing expense and prohibits neat and snug folding within a compact package.
This latter point can be significant since store shelf packaging space is important in getting medical device dispensing stores to shelve a product. Put another way, high manufacturing expense and bulky packaging will prevent general store acceptance for shelf display.
Yet another problem with cast protectors for consumer acceptance is that the sleeve must be configured such that it can be easily put on and taken off, and the sleeve must be able to accommodate casts for the arm, for example, that are just simply forearm casts or for the entire arm that need to accommodate the possibility of a 90° bend, for example, at the elbow. This similar situation exists for the leg, ankle and knee. That is to say that one cast protector needs to be available for the entirety of the arm, whether only a forearm cast or a complete arm cast; and similarly one cast protector size needs to be available for the leg in this same way. The number of variations that need to be manufactured can therefore be lessened, even further decreasing manufacturing expense.
Generally, in order to provide patient movement, the tubular material from which a cast protector is made, must be flexible. However, integrity must not be sacrificed for flexibility, since the protector in combination with the opening seal, must protect against entry of moisture. This can be difficult, since the opening seal or diaphragm must be a highly stretchable diaphragm material to allow it to be pulled over casts of a wide variety of diameters. As a result, the diaphragm must be more stretchable, than the flexible cast cover. Such a difference in stretch properties often results in a tear at the point of sealing of the diaphragm and cast cover.
This invention has as one object the making of a cast cover which has a diaphragm that stretches easily over a cast without tearing away at the attachment point to the actual cast cover.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a waterproof shield or sleeve for bandages or casts that can easily be applied and effectively seal the limb in order to prevent water accessing the cast or bandage, during, for example, bathing or showering.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide the above advantages and objectives with a system which is economical to make, and which eliminates the high expense of a separate sealing ring.
A yet further object of the present invention is to provide the above advantages with a cast and bandage protector which can be folded over upon itself for easy, efficient packaging, and conserved shelf space.
An even further objective of the present invention is to provide a cast protector which is a flexible sleeve design to allow easy pull on and take off and which has sufficient flexibility, i.e., a widened area to accommodate up to a 90° bends at covered joints, such as elbows, ankles and knees to allow freedom of movement inside the cast cover.
The foregoing and other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading the description of a preferred embodiment which follows in conjunction with the below described drawings.